BPO sector to grow by 20-25%

Wave of outsourcing to create 90,000 jobs in 2009

By Joel Guinto
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 15:45:00 03/10/2009

CLARK FIELD, Pampanga – The business process outsourcing (BPO) industry in the country will grow by 20 to 25 percent and generate as much as 90,000 jobs this year as more American companies turn to outsourcing to cut costs, the chairman of the Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT) said.

“We are predicting good growth across the board,” CICT chairman Ray Antony Roxas-Chua told reporters here after a Cabinet meeting on the cyber-corridor “super region.”

“We are projecting this year a growth of 20 to 25 percent, and this translates to 80,000 to 90,000 jobs. We are still hopeful that this is attainable this year,” he said.

At the end of 2008, Roxas-Chua said the BPO sector, which includes voice and non-voice services, employed 372,000.

The non-voice services, which includes medical transcription and software engineering, is expected to grow more than voice services or call centers, Roxas-Chua said.

Roxas-Chua said outsourcing to cut costs continues to be the trend abroad, and the Philippines was benefitting from it.

During the Cabinet meeting, Roxas-Chua briefed Arroyo on the status of the cyber-corridor “super region” that the government was developing.

Areas which comprise the cyber-corridor include Metro Manila and Cebu. The ten “next wave” areas include Laguna, Cavite, Iloilo, Davao, Bacolod, Pampanga, Malolos and Calumpit towns in Bulacan, Cagayan de Oro, and Lipa City.

Roxas-Chua said investors were wary about investing in Davao and Cagayan de Oro cities because of perceptions of violence in these areas. He lamented how travel advisories would cover the entire Mindanao when conflict was confined to specific areas.

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